I happen to have that research right here, Mr. Keller: The day sociologist Zeynep Tufekci dropped a bundle of knowledge on the New York Times’s Bill Keller (with help from Twitter and a whole lot of scholarship)

While repeating some of the stranger accusations he’s previously leveled at his critics (“My view of social media is that it is a set of tools, not a religion”; “digital evangelists and cyber-puritans… treat any hint of skepticism as heresy”), Keller also spelled out what he thinks social media is (and isn’t) useful for:

At the Times, we embrace social media, we use it, we experiment with it. We have a staff dedicated to figuring out new ways to make the best journalistic use of it. We have staff seminars on social media. I encourage reporters to look at Twitter and Facebook and to figure out if there’s a way these services can be helpful to them. Like many tools, Twitter will fit some people’s toolkits more naturally than others, and will be used more skillfully and creatively by some people than others…

The point of my column was that most technological progress comes at a price, and it’s okay to consider the price along with the progress. For some people, Facebook is a way to engage more openly with the world. But there’s an opportunity cost. The time you spend keeping up with your 200 Facebook friends is time you are not getting to know someone really well in person. Twitter is all the wonderful things I said above and then some, but Twitter is mostly reductionist. It does not lend itself to deep, rich conversation, with context and persuasion. It CAN be a stimulus to serious discussion, but that is not the nature of the tool, which is reach rather than depth.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, I do not believe that Twitter literally makes people stupid. If you read the column, you know that I posted a hashtag — #twittermakesyoustupid — followed, please note, by the word “discuss.” The point was to throw out a subject for discussion, and see how the medium dealt with it, which was pretty much the way I expected. (A hashtag is a topic, not an argument. ) I think Twitter can encourage distraction, superficiality, short attention spans, bumper-sticker-level discourse. It can make you SOUND stupid. But, no, I don’t think it makes you stupid.

Now, the long-standing, well-known rule of thumb on the web is “Do Not Feed the Trolls.” In other words, when an Internet user posts something with the deliberate intention of starting a fight, don’t give them what they want. “#TwitterMakesYouStupid. Discuss” has all the telltale marks of a troll. Even Keller says that the argument went “pretty much the way I expected.”

But in this interview, Keller doesn’t seem to be looking to troll the web, but asking for a different kind of engagement. I don’t think he was expecting that different kind of engagement to happen on Twitter. But that’s exactly what happened.

Mr. Keller and everyone on the net probably intuitively understands that where we couldn’t ‘discuss’ at all before, now we can.

People who are accustomed to deference will be shocked, those accustomed to defer will also be shocked. We are all equals, whether we like it or not–and sometimes we don’t like it too much. It is the easiest thing to unfollow someone who offends us. Yet we are reluctant to unfollow or just walk away, even under some negative emotional impact.
We don’t want to appear rude to those who are spamming us…is that completely rational?

Are we any more open? Are we any more isolated than we were before? I discuss essentially nothing on Twitter. Twitter provided the link to this post; i.e. ‘reach vs. depth.’ No one social network or platform is ‘the answer.’

What would we discuss in a doughnut shop? How shallow or how deep would that get? Are you listening to shallow people? (Some of mine are.)

We don’t have to talk to, or listen to, anyone we don’t want to. Ah, but now we can sit in a doughnut shop and Tweet to friend and foe alike.

We can mess with their heads, and this gives us a new-found power. In terms of ethics and morality, some will inevitably fail in this world, but they were failing under a previous world-model.

Twitter may not make you stupid, per se, but it certainly does represent billions of hours wasted. You can tweet and tweet all day long with a vengeance, but in the end you will have made nothing of value, created nothing, built nothing. It’s a chronic time-waster, but so is Facebook and so is watching TV. This is the culture we have created and embraced: the culture of nothingness, brought to a fine art.

Twitter may not make you stupid, per se, but it certainly does represent billions of hours wasted. You can tweet and tweet all day long with a vengeance, but in the end you will have made nothing of value, created nothing, built nothing. It’s a chronic time-waster, but so is Facebook and so is watching TV. This is the culture we have created and embraced: the culture of nothingness, brought to a fine art.

Carmody, Tim. "I happen to have that research right here, Mr. Keller: The day sociologist Zeynep Tufekci dropped a bundle of knowledge on the New York Times’s Bill Keller (with help from Twitter and a whole lot of scholarship)." Nieman Journalism Lab. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 22 Jun. 2011. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.

APA

Carmody, T. (2011, Jun. 22). I happen to have that research right here, Mr. Keller: The day sociologist Zeynep Tufekci dropped a bundle of knowledge on the New York Times’s Bill Keller (with help from Twitter and a whole lot of scholarship). Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved December 9, 2016, from http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/i-happen-to-have-that-research-right-here-mr-keller-the-day-sociologist-zeynep-tufekci-dropped-a-bundle-of-knowledge-on-the-new-york-timess-bill-keller-with-help-from-twitter-and-a-whole-lot-of/

Chicago

Carmody, Tim. "I happen to have that research right here, Mr. Keller: The day sociologist Zeynep Tufekci dropped a bundle of knowledge on the New York Times’s Bill Keller (with help from Twitter and a whole lot of scholarship)." Nieman Journalism Lab. Last modified June 22, 2011. Accessed December 9, 2016. http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/i-happen-to-have-that-research-right-here-mr-keller-the-day-sociologist-zeynep-tufekci-dropped-a-bundle-of-knowledge-on-the-new-york-timess-bill-keller-with-help-from-twitter-and-a-whole-lot-of/.

Wikipedia

{{cite web
| url = http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/i-happen-to-have-that-research-right-here-mr-keller-the-day-sociologist-zeynep-tufekci-dropped-a-bundle-of-knowledge-on-the-new-york-timess-bill-keller-with-help-from-twitter-and-a-whole-lot-of/
| title = I happen to have that research right here, Mr. Keller: The day sociologist Zeynep Tufekci dropped a bundle of knowledge on the New York Times’s Bill Keller (with help from Twitter and a whole lot of scholarship)
| last = Carmody
| first = Tim
| work = [[Nieman Journalism Lab]]
| date = 22 June 2011
| accessdate = 9 December 2016
| ref = {{harvid|Carmody|2011}}
}}